2008: Man with a Movie Camera Vertov in the age of youtube
2008: Man with a Movie Camera is an experiment in database cinema. This huge participatory project will continue to grow indefinitely as visitors to the project website ( dziga.perrybard.net ) upload footage to become part of a global montage. Based on Dziga Vertov’s 1929 masterpiece, this version takes his concept of “decoding life as it is” into the twenty first century. Blogs, YouTube, and sites such as Facebook and Flickr have revolutionised the way we communicate and created an entirely new system of social networking.
Situated in this digital context, 2008: Man with a Movie Camera initiates a unique approach to filmmaking. Individuals are invited to upload shots and scenes based on scenes from the original film, creating a database which then streams as a film. As a collection of personal visions this montage is in Vertov’s terms “a continuous exchange of visible fact”. Uploads to the site will take place continuously: the nature of the database is infinite.
Vertov’s film is a favourite amongst independent filmmakers, film buffs, film critics and historians. His concern for aesthetics, the complex structure of the film (which contains a film within the film), his experimental editing techniques, and the MTV-like rhythm of the shots give the film a very contemporary feel. Vertov’s work was barely appreciated during his lifetime; unable to get his films into theatres, he showed them in public spaces such as worker’s recreation halls. The public context of Big Screens couldn’t be a more appropriate venue to pay homage to his work.
Biography
Perry Bard is an artist who works with electronic media and lives in New York. Her public video installations are site specific and address cultural history and memory often involving local community members in the production process.
She has exhibited video and installations internationally. She has created work for the Staten Island Ferry Terminal Building in New York, Market Square in Middlesbrough (UK) a JVC Video store in Sofia (Bulgaria) the Hotel Cristal in Bialystok Poland. Current works about the U.S. intervention in Iraq include a mobile billboard that features artifacts missing from the Baghdad Museum travelling the streets of New York on a delivery truck, a related artist project in the summer 2006 issue of Art Journal and cup sleeves containing images related to the intervention inserted in coffee shops.
Watch an Extract
You need to have Flash Player v7 or later to watch the films online.
The Other Commissions
Juneau Projects, Honorable Ordinaries
susan pui san lok DIY Ballroom/ Live
Esther Johnson, Celestial
